Southern Poverty Law Center

The Washington Post reported in 2016 that "in the 1980s, the Southern Poverty Law Center — an organization born of the civil rights movement — began tracking extremist organizations they deemed “hate groups” in the United States."[8] In March 2018, the Southern Poverty Law Center's "Hate Map" was #2 on Google.[9]Mike Adams, writing just after his YouTube had been removed, described the The SPLC as "a radical left-wing hate group that despises Christianity, the Second Amendment and patriots in particular."[1]

Purposes

The phrase, along with others such as "domestic extremist", appears to be part of the effort to support the ongoing project to criminalize free speech.